Posts By Sarah Clancy

Our leaders would like to inform us
that they are fine with protest
in fact they really respect us
so long as we follow their rules and do it
without any disruption of business, (preferably
at home in our own bedrooms where no one can see us,
and without any unnecessary shouting
that might upset the neighbours)
they’re fine with it then,
so they are.

Our leaders would prefer if we fought with each other
and if we absolutely have to protest in public they’d rather
we did it in the form of a strongly worded letter to the paper
or a phone call to Joe which their straw men could deal with
by saying they’ve launched an inquiry that’ll never be finished
and that they agree with us about whatever it is
that should never have happened,
haven’t they’ve always said it,
sure?

If the worst comes to the worst and, despite them warning us
that we should have due consideration
for the inevitable, unspecified but extremely sinister consequences,
we mount a demonstration against them
they’ll counter by saying that some of the people out marching
are reported to have once been spotted by someone
eating ice cream in Bangor which everyone knows
is north of the border
and you know what that means
or don’t you?

Our leaders would prefer if we’d focus our anger
on the unemployed carpenter who put up some shelves
for his mother when he knew full well that accepting
more than two biscuits counts as a nixer-
he’s the type that has ruined our country
they call him the benefit scrounger,
who was fully employed until 2009
but now has managed to squander something something million,
yes that exact figure, would you like to report him?
Click here please…
oh yes your call is important.

Our leaders would love us to whinge about the imaginary asylum seeker
who is rumoured to have left a thousand prams
at a thousand bus stops in every single city, small town and village
you know the woman? No, me neither,
because no one has ever actually met her
but it’s rumoured that her skin was darker than yours is,
or so they’ll tell us, our leaders,
because they’d love us to fight with each other
over any small difference and leave them alone while we’re doing it,

they’d love if we picked on the gays instead of the bankers
they’d love you to get riled up about Panti Bliss who wants
to come into your house and ruin your marriage instead of wondering
how the hell they themselves put us in bondage
to repay 60 billion to loan sharks we never did business with,
and they’d love if those in negative equity
squabbled with the people from council estates
and if they in turn would fight with the renters
who’d pick on with the travelers
and they’d rather you made like a fascist
and blamed the Roma who, they are happy to tell us
are the cause of the economy collapsing
and were somehow involved in causing global warming
I mean have you not spotted the sea levels rising
did you not see the floods in Cork like?
Of course you did, they won’t stand for it,
or something.

And it’s nothing personal that our leaders have
against any particular ethnicity,
it just that they hate to see us united and mobilised
they are afraid we might compare notes
and realize that the same things affect us all the same way,
they’re afraid we might lose the run of ourselves
and run them the hell out of office,
and what should we tell them?

That we’re in this together?
That every person of every class, creed and race
who wants something better is welcome? Is one of us?
Or should we tell them that when 85 individuals own more
of the wealth in the world than three point five billion
the problem goes deeper than skin colour, deeper than factions
deeper than their strategies for permanent growth on one tiny planet
should we tell them that our system is broken?
Or should we just say nothing
and watch how they tremble,
when they see us all sticking together.

Sarah Clancy

Share this:

&white&
or cead mile failte, are you here for the torture?&white&
In case you had managed to misremember
how much our country hates us
along comes another woman needing shelter;
because someone transgressed against her
she needs help from us, just for the moment
until all this is behind her,
and do we make her welcome?
Does she get the help she needs? Ah
you know the answer: does she hell-
this country hates the likes of her
this country rapes the likes of her,
we will leave her with her bodily integrity in tatters
while psychiatrists fight it out about her psyche
and noone will ask her opinion
on what’s to be done with her
she is not considered sentient
and our state penetrates her
over and over and over-&white&
this woman will be incorporated as evidence
in a poisonous debate that skims over how
very many ways the state we’ve built
is willing to degrade us, she will get a code name
and become a touchstone, something (not someone)
that we can talk about in concerned tones
on Marion Finucane and we will shake our heads
and say it’s clear now that our state hates us
as if we hadn’t always known it
as if we haven’t always felt it
as if it hasn’t been the subtext of our paths
through life to womanhood-&white&
men friends it’s clear now too,
that if you are so inclined you could rape us,
and in all but a few cases you’d serve no sentence
not only that lads but here in our little Ireland
you could impregnate us, force a conception
that we played no part in, then you could
sit back and wait for our institutions
to force motherhood upon us
and they’ll do it- they’ve proved it
even if they have to perforate our mouths with tubes
and force feed us, even if they have to sedate us
then slice our wombs open with surgical knives,
they can and obviously will do it
and deep down we always knew this:
we knew Savita Halappanavar
we knew the Kerry Babies
we knew of lonely deaths on wet nights in Granard
and the A,B, C, and X cases&white&
and the fortunate amongst us,
the ones with resources know what ferry terminals
look like at night time and how much it costs
to raise a child in all sorts of currencies,
we know whether we are or are not up for it
there should be no shame in that but here, well,
we must keep it secret because of how much
our state hates us, when we make love
we take the risk of ending up in hospital
in a country where if you’re a pregnant woman
‘state care’ is an oxymoron, it’s a shame to say
that as long as we have the capacity
to bear children, Ireland is not a safe place for us;
women, rise up, this country hates us
it’s long past time we changed it
enough is way too much this time.&white&&white&
Referendum now – repeal the 8th Amendment.

Share this:

In the housing office the woman says
if I need a house that I’ll have to tell the council
I’m homeless or else bunk in with my parents
and I feel the heat of tears in my eyes and let me tell you
it’s not sadness I’m feeling it’s anger;
after all of my years insisting that no one
will ever call me victim in they come
and do it from a whole different angle I didn’t see coming
and they call it helping,
these are the times that I live in
still paying the tail end of my mortgage
with no home to show for it
and I wonder what I’ve absorbed that means
even with all of my theories, my politics
this, the oldest human endeavour;
seeking out shelter
has become shame-filled
and on my way down through town
Rosaleen asks for a fiver, I give it
it’s easier to offer than to ask I reckon
she says I am beautiful showing the limits
of her English vocabulary, I am not
what I am is damaged and raging,
on days like this I seek the sea out and breath it,
or I’ll write love poems to someone
and you what do you do to get through it?

Share this:

I won’t name the entity that’s colonising creativity
except to say that it has been turfed off the sportsfield
for low tackles and foul behaviour already, you will find it in
a million spewed up burgers on our city pavements
and it was there while a thousand boy racers
had single vehicle collisions and left their mothers crying
it stood and watched wife beatings, gay bashings, street violence
it leered at women with their skirts askew in doorways
it sat at the cliffs while friends of mine jumped off them
and quicker than you can say tax-payer- funded
public- service- broadcasting it mixed with pills and sadness
in lonely apartments and killed people, worse it appeased
our post colonial state so much that we can’t mount
even a strongly worded letter and now in the last bastion
where people can create something, in one last Arena
of no profit ventures ,in a refuge of free breathing, seeing
and of open fulfilling disagreements It has the nerve to ask
if it could be allowed to enter, it says it’s at our service,
but to be honest I doubt it. Sponsor this poem or I’ll bottle ya.

I’ll be writing more about this at the weekend but I think this is a good standalone clip from evidence to the banking inquiry given by Prof. Ed Kane on Wednesday 28 Jan 2015. He was asked by Deputy Pearse Doherty to elaborate on the statement below which was made in a paper that […]

Shadows never go away. Might be you don’t see them, but they’re always clinging to your heels.” A Song of Ice and Fire When I was a child in primary school my way of dealing with Irish class was to find a word in the question that matched a word in the text and hope […]

Reprieved! Reprieved! I was sure of it. When you’re most despairing The clouds may be clearing.” The Threepenny Opera. Patrick Honohan, the governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, will be before the Bank Inquiry committee this week to talk about his 2010 report into the crisis. We will be able to hear his explanation […]

I do not think it is fair to say people partied. People just lived a little better than they otherwise would have done because of the bubble.” Peter Nyberg under questioning from Deputy Pearse Doherty, 17 Dec 2014. Peter Nyberg’s appearance at the Irish bank inquiry marked the beginning of the context phase, the purpose […]